Translated from French by Linda CoverdalePublished by Penguin “I’d promised myself that before I turned forty I would live as a hermit deep in the woods.” That was Sylvain Tesson’s promise to himself, a promise that he kept. Tesson spent six months in a cabin on the shore of Lake Baikal in Siberia from February …
Continue reading Consolations of the Forest—Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga: Sylvain Tesson
Published by Vintage and Penguin I read The Snow Leopard when I was in my early 20s, and I loved it enough to put it on my list of 10 favourite books—where it has stayed since then. Published in 1978, The Snow Leopard is a classic, blending travel and philosophy. Peter Matthiessen was an American …
Published by Tarapress “Suraiya Hasan Bose is a name inscribed into the craft map of Andhra Pradesh. It speaks of a lifetime of passion and commitment to the cause of handloom from pre-Independence India to the present day.” This book pays tribute to Suraiya Hasan Bose and her lifelong association with Indian handlooms, especially those …
Continue reading Suraiya Hasan Bose—Weaving a Legacy: Radhika Singh
Translated from Polish by Jennifer CroftPublished by Fitzcarraldo Editions “Clearly I did not inherit whatever gene it is that makes it so that when you linger in a place you start to put down roots. I’ve tried, a number of times but my roots have always been shallow; the littlest breeze could always blow me …
Published by Picador “How many times have I returned in my dreams to this hill. It is always summer as I look out over the gold and green fields, ditches foaming with hawthorn and lilac, river glinting under the sun like a blade. When I was young, I found sanctuary here and the memory of …
Continue reading Walking with Ghosts—A Memoir: Gabriel Byrne
Published by Viking “When I was a kid, my aspirations were simple. I wanted a dog. I wanted a house that had stairs in it—two floors for one family. I wanted, for some reason, a four-door station wagon instead of the two-door Buick that was my father’s pride and joy.” Simple beginnings indeed for one …
“Although women have invented since the beginning of time, it seems as if full recognition of their role has been painfully slow.” When you think of inventors, who do you think of? Usually it is men like Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers and Giovanni Marconi. Seeing that women make up nearly half of the world’s …
Continue reading Feminine Ingenuity—How Women Inventors Changed America: Anne L. Macdonald
From 2005 to 2020, Lionel Barber had what he called “the best job in the world”: editor of the London Financial Times. This is Barber’s account of those years and his close encounters with the great and the not-so-great (or good!). As editor of a major newspaper, Barber meets the people who make the news: …
Continue reading The Powerful and the Damned—Private Diaries in Turbulent Times: Lionel Barber
Sonia Faleiro’s new book, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing, investigates the death of two young girls in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh. The book offers Faleiro, an accomplished journalist, an opportunity to spend four years following up on a hot-button news story. It lets her, and her readers, to look beyond the lurid headlines and to shatter …
“The story I am going to tell comes from a place deep inside of myself, a place that perceives all that I have irremediably lost and, perhaps, what gain there is behind the loss. If people forget their past as a way to survive, other people remember it for the same reason. When cultures with …
